Little Stevie and the Crow

I THOUGHT THAT it was probably dead, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

It was the first week of the fourth grade, and I was walking to school by myself on a hot and windy Friday morning. It took quite a bit of negotiation for me to convince my parents to let me walk to school alone. But I had finally led them to believe that I could successfully fight off a stranger or a bad guy with an extra sharp pencil, if I really had to. I even started carrying a big cluster of extra sharp pencils in my backpack, and I always made sure to carry one sharpened pencil in each hand, as I made my fifteen minute walk to school each morning.

I first spotted it as I was walking, and it was dead from what I could tell. It was sprawled across the sidewalk, with its wings spread wide. Most of its black feathers were still shiny and pretty, but some of them had started to decay.

Four tidy trails of ants approached the dead bird from different directions. Since the ants appeared to be so organized, I wondered why they didn’t just put their ant brains together and approach the dead bird from a single direction. Maybe it was because they were eating different parts of the dead bird, and they didn’t want to get in each other’s way and have a fight break out. I don’t know.

Best I could tell, the dead bird looked like a crow. I thought it could’ve been a raven, but I didn’t know the difference at the time. All I knew was that it was a bird and it was dead. Its big black beak was opened halfway, and ants were crawling in and out of its mouth.

* * *

I ran straight home after school, skipping our school’s weekly “Friday After School Ice Cream Social.” I rummaged through the garage as soon as I got home. My dad had some pretty neat looking stuff on his work table, but I ignored most of his tools. I went straight for a white plastic crate that was stuffed into the back corner of the garage. I grabbed a fist full of wires, batteries, and an old BBQ lighter.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me to the dead crow lying all by himself on the dirty sidewalk. I don’t know exactly where the idea came from, but I knew that I could probably make that dead crow squawk again if I really put my mind to it.

The sun was going down fast, casting long and scary shadows across the sidewalk. I took the loose ends of the wires and stuck them straight into the crow’s chest, where I figured his heart would be. I tied the other ends of the wires to the old batteries, even though there was some battery acid leaking around the edges. Then I took the BBQ lighter and gave it a nice solid flick, placing the flame right up to the spot where the ends of the wires connected to the battery.

At first, there was just a smoke. Then there were sparks. Then the bird made a big, tremendous jolt! Let me tell you, that dead black bird shot up into the air so high that he darn near got stuck up in a tree! When he landed on the ground, I picked him up and patted his head real gently. He looked at me with his big black eyes, and immediately seemed to know that I had rescued him from an eternal death.

I scooped up the bird into my arms and took him home with me. It took quite a bit of convincing, but my folks eventually let me keep him as a pet. At first, the crow slept in our garage, but eventually he made his way upstairs and got nice and cozy in my bed each night. Since I’m an only child, my parents didn’t mind much, since the crow was good company for me and kept me from getting in trouble with the neighborhood hooligans.

Then he started talking. I never thought in a million years that a crow could talk, but boy was I wrong! At first, he would just mumble a few words, like “howdy,” or “I like.” Before long, we were chatting up a storm together every morning, afternoon, and night. Since he could talk, I figured he needed a cool name. I decided on Blackie.

One day I got the courage to take Blackie with me to school. He sat high upon my shoulder like some sort of British royalty, as I waltzed into Ms. McGillicuddy’s fourth grade class. Ms. McGillicuddy just stood there with a shocked look, as if her entire face had been stuck in a freezer all night long. But eventually, Blackie won her over, too. First, he complimented Ms. McGillicuddy on her light blue cashmere sweater. Then, she realized how soft his feathers were, and she just loved to pet him. Finally, Blackie really turned on the charm by helping Ms. McGillicuddy pick up pencils, papers, and trash from the classroom floor each day. In the end, Ms. McGillicuddy decided to make Blackie our class mascot. She even put a watercolor painting of him on our classroom door.

* * *

And that’s the story of how I came to have a pet crow. There are a few other things I could tell you about Blackie, like the time he ate the hamster belonging to the little girl next-door, or the time he hopped off my shoulder at the supermarket and flew super low between the aisles, scaring the older shoppers halfway to death. I suppose one day I’ll have to sit down with a notepad and a pen and make a list of all the interesting things I’ve encountered with Blackie.

But I think the greatest thing about Blackie is the way he looks at me every day with a great big smile stretched across his sharp beak. He seems to understand that if it were not for me and my wires and my batteries and my BBQ lighter, he would’ve never had a chance.

J.S. Lender’s new book “They Are Here Now (Short Tales)” is now available in paperback on Amazon.

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